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Monday, October 16, 2006

Non-linear thinking curve fitting

Someone at TOD came up with the eyeball fit to the peaking of world oil production:

In the category of other weird statistical anomalies, the peakoil.com site shows up in the top 50 energy sites -- today 3 down from Chevron.

And who else but David Byrne should provide us the latest thinking in bicycle transportation. Mr. Byrne went to a talk by the former mayor of Bogota, Columbia:

One common measure of the cleanliness of a mountain stream is to look for trout. If you find the trout, the habitat is healthy. It’s the same way with children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.

When I was elected mayor of Bogotá and got to city hall, I was handed a transportation study that said the most important thing the city could do was to build an elevated highway at a cost of $600 million. Instead, we installed a bus system that carries 700,000 people a day at a cost of $300 million. We created hundreds of pedestrian-only streets, parks, plazas, and bike paths, planted trees, and got rid of cluttering commercial signs. We constructed the longest pedestrian-only street in the world. [more than 20km!] It may seem crazy, because this street goes through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Bogotá, and many of the surrounding streets aren’t even paved. But we chose not to improve the streets for the sake of cars, but instead to have wonderful spaces for pedestrians. All this pedestrian infrastructure shows respect for human dignity. We’re telling people, “You are important — not because you’re rich or because you have a Ph.D., but because you are human.” If people are treated as special, as sacred even, they behave that way. This creates a different kind of society.

...

“If a bike lane that isn’t safe for an 8 year old child it isn’t a bike lane.”

“Traffic jams are not always bad. The priority is not always to relieve them. They will force people to use public transportation.”

“Building more highways never relieves congestion.” (This was not his insight, but he reminded us how true it is.)

“Transportation is not an end — it is a means to having a better life, a more enjoyable life — the real goal is not to improve transportation but to improve the quality of life.”

“A place without sidewalks privileges the automobile, and therefore the richer people in cars have more rights; this is undemocratic.”

Climate Primates

"Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it." - George Monbiot

"In news the rule is that liberals will watch the news, and conservatives will watch conservative news. A liberal will watch to see what you think, the conservative will watch to see how much you agree with him. This is why the headline world is so far to the right even of the content." - Stirling Newberry

"... it is calculable fact, week after week, on show after show -- unless you consider the mere act of reporting itself to be a 'liberal' act, which many movement conservatives do. " - Hunter

"The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake
their heads." - Edward Abbey

"The people of ____ have been led in ____ into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The ____ communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a disaster." - TE Lawrence

"My life's the disease that could always change
With comparative ease, just given the chance
My life is the earth, 'twixt muscle and spade
I wait for the worth, digging for just one chance
As prospects diminish, as nightmares swell
Some pray for Heaven while we live in Hell" - E&TB

"The juicy stories keep popping out ... like clowns from a clown car." - James Wolcott"Why don't they talk about the issues?! We're fighting for our LIVES here!!" - Marc Maron"That's it man, game over man, game over, man! Game over!" - Hudson played by Bill Paxton-- Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions